to the poetry of the Pléiade. The situation is almost exactly parallel. 'Ce n'est point manquer de respect à Malherbe, ni d'admiration pour son œuvre que de dire: après l'effort violent, tumultueux, désordonné de la Pléiade et de cette foule de poètes qu'elle suscita derrière elle, il était natural que le goût public, un peu fatigué par les hardiesses des novateurs, se montrât disposé à favoriser surtout des qualités toutes différentes: une facture ferme et soutenue dans le vers, fût-elle un peu monotone; une ordonnance régulière dans la composition, dût le poete y montrer plus de sagesse dans le raisonnement que de vivacité d'imagination; une langue régulière, sobre et châtiée, tout opposée à l'exubérance de Ronsard et de son école. Malherbe répondit merveilleusement à cette disposition générale des esprits, prêts à goûter paisiblement un excellent écrivain en vers, plutôt qu' à suivre dans les nues un grand poète intempérant."

In England the poets who marvelously responded to the demands of the change in public taste were those rather insignificant versifiers, Waller and Denham2; and to them, accordingly, the credit of the reform was generally given. But, as Dr. Johnson points out, the authority of such naturally minor persons would have been ineffectual without the powerful support of Dryden. Enlisting under the banners of Aristotle, Horace, Ben Jonson, and Corneille, he began a mighty onslaught on the sins of the old poetic diction, and inaugurated at once the modern period of English prose and the age of the heroic couplet. But Dryden's own heedless practice was not the best possible recommendation of 'correctness.' It was not until the patiently

1

1 Histoire 4. I. This chapter is by Petit de Julleville himself. 2'After about a half a century of forced thoughts and rugged metres some advances toward nature and harmony had been made by Waller and Denham.'-Life of Dryden (Lives 1. 419). See ibid. I. 393, notes I and 6, for a list of some of the numerous references in the eighteenth century to Denham's strength and Waller's sweetness.

artistic Pope took up the good work that the triumph of the new style was complete. In the development of the art and fame of Pope, and the reaction against Pope, are summed up the whole history of English literature between Milton and Wordsworth. The period ended in a wholesale abolishment of poetic diction, and a return to the spoken language as the source and standard of literary expression. We do not usually recall that it began in exactly the same

manner.

1. The Development of the School of Pope.

Although Dryden and Pope were later celebrated as the discoverers of those elegances and flowers of speech on which the eighteenth century especially plumed itself,1 these were an indirect result of their practice, rather than a direct aim of their criticism. The point was not to develop a new poetic diction, but to get rid of an old one; and the attempt was chiefly directed against what all must admit to be vices in any style-careless workmanship, and a system of antiquated words or forms of words which did not correspond to the language as it was actually spoken. In both cases the effort was negative rather than positive, characterized by Thou shalt nots rather than by Thou shalts.

The desire to avoid careless workmanship-to trust nothing to the caprice of the poet-led to the development of a standard metre, the heroic couplet, which had been a

'There was, therefore, before the time of Dryden no poetical diction, no system of words at once refined from the grossness of domestic use, and free from the harshness of terms appropriated to particular arts. Those happy combinations of words which distinguish poetry from prose had rarely been attempted; we had few elegances or flowers of speech; the roses had not yet been plucked from the bramble, or different colors had not yet been joined to enliven one another.'-Dryden (Lives 1. 420).

Johns

L

favorite with Ben Jonson,1 and had become increasingly popular through the century. The rules for the manipulation of this type of verse became so strict that the art of packing thoughts and feelings of every sort into these neat lines without any apparent difficulty might seem to demand a miracle of ingenuity. In the first place, the poet must close the sense with the couplet. These couplets he must make metrically readable, without departing from the normal character and relation of words in prose. He must invert the order as little as possible,3 and must avoid the use of words unnecessary to the sense, or forms that had become obsolete. Under this latter type were included the expletive do, and the old ending of the second and third person of the present indicative est and eth. Moreover, the versification must be not only readable, but distinctly melodious to the ear. There must be no hiatus,7 no wearisome repetition of the same vowel, no clash of

1'Aside from his strictly lyrical verse, in which Jonson shared the metrical inventiveness of his age, the decasyllabic rimed couplet was all but his constant measure.' Schelling, 'Ben Jonson and the Classical School,' Pub. Mod. Lang. Assoc. 13. 235.

2 See Pope's letter on versification, Letters 1. 56-59.

3

Cf. the Earl of Musgrave's Essay upon Poetry (Spingarn 2.

288):

Th' expression easy, and the fancy high,

Yet that not seems to creep, nor this to fly;

No words transpos'd, but in such just cadence

As though, hard wrought, may seem th' effect of chance.

Dr. Johnson censures Waller for using the expletive do very frequently, though he lived to see it almost universally ejected.'— Waller (Lives 1. 294). Cf. Pope, Essay on Criticism 347. Dryden is not careful to avoid the expletive; there are four examples of it in the first fifteen lines of Absalom and Achitophel.

5 'He sometimes uses the obsolete termination of verbs,' says Dr. Johnson of Waller, mentioning this as another 'abatement' of his 'excellence in versification.'

7

Ibid. 345: "Though oft the ear the open vowels tire.' But cf. his remarks on hiatus, Letters 1. 58. Pope says that in all Malherbe's poems he found but one example of hiatus.-Letters 1. 78.

consonants; the music must be full, clear, and continually varied. The rhyme must be exact, and must fall on naturally accented syllables, not on weak words like of, to, etc. If to all these virtues the poet could add the sweetness of alliteration, for which Waller was famed, and the onomatopoeic skill displayed by Dryden in his song for St. Cecilia's day, and by Pope in his Essay on Criticism, he was in a fair way to escape the censure that awaited the careless craftsman. To be a good craftsman, a thorough master of the technique of rhyming, was the chief ambition of the poets of the new generation. For it they were willing to surrender all claim to those rarer graces that lie beyond the reach of art.

While this emphasis upon correctness and polish in versification naturally led to a similar emphasis in the choice of words, the reform began in France with a notable anticipation of Wordsworth's preference for the language of the lower and middle classes. Of the literary principles of Malherbe, Petit de Julleville writes: 'Elle se réduit à un petit nombre de préceptes, plutôt négatifs; comme de décrire les choses par leur traits les plus généraux; de relever seulement, par une harmonie savante et un habile arrangement, des idées et expressions si simples qu'en des mains moins adroites elles sembleraient purement prosaïques. Cette simplicité presque banale des termes

''Tis all we can do to give sufficient sweetness to our language: we must not only choose our words for elegance, but for sound; to perform which a mastery in the language is required; but the poet must have a magazine of words, and have the art to manage his few vowels to the best advantage, that they may go further. He must also know the nature of the vowels, which are more sonorous, and which more soft and sweet.'-Ker 2. 215-216.

2 See Johnson's remarks on Waller's rhymes.-Waller (Lives 1. 294). Pope's rhymes were not always exact; see the list of inexact rhymes in the concordance to Pope. Klopstock remarked upon Dryden's carelessness in this respect to Wordsworth, who defended Dryden.-B. L. 2. 178.

3 Histoire 4. 9-10.

employés lui faisait dire que "les crocheteurs du Port au Foin étaient ses maîtres en fait de langage." As Malherbe sought his language among the 'crocheteurs,' the Royal Society in England turned to the language of 'artisans, country-men, and merchants' for clear and effective expression. Although the Royal Society was interested in the simplification of English prose style for the sake of scientific clearness, rather than of artistic beauty, it helped to establish a new ideal. The sins of English prose were the sins of English verse also; and Sprat's criticism of the misuse of ornament in the one was equally applicable to the other.

The ornaments of speech have much degenerated from their original use, writes Sprat.2 "They were at first, no doubt, an admirable instrument in the hands of wise men; when they were only employed to describe goodness, honesty, obedience, in larger, fairer, and more moving images, to represent truth clothed with bodies, and to bring knowledge back again to our very senses, from whence it was at first derived to our understandings. But now they are generally changed to worse uses; they are in open defiance to reason, professing not to hold much correspondence with that.' Finding this bad habit of speech utterly at variance with all scientific honesty, the Royal Society 'is most rigorous in putting into execution the only remedy that can be found for this extravagance.' Accordingly it exacts from all its members a 'close, naked, natural way. of speaking; positive expressions, clear senses; a native easiness, bringing all things as near the mathematical plainness as they can; and preferring the language of artisans, country-men, and merchants before that of wits and scholars.'

The parallel with the Lyrical Ballads is recognized by Professor Raleigh, who comments on the difference in purpose also.—Introduction to the selections from Sprat, in Craik, English Prose 3. 270. 2 Spingarn 2. 117-118.